I've been "making" a partial model of Three Sands, the iconic oil boom town. Tried to find info in the 1940 Census, because the town peaked around then. [CORRECTION BELOW.] The detailed sheets don't help much. Clearly the Census considered temporary housing to be non-resident, like travelers in hotels. Only the permanent houses that had postal Rural Route numbers were included. Some of the 'upper crust' employees of the town were able to rent real houses.
This page, chopped and channeled as usual, shows what I mean:
Doctor, postmaster, clerk, and some pumpers and roustabouts with families.
This is the only 'pure oil' page from the ED that included 3 Sands. The rest are mostly farmers.
The town was about half in Kay County and half in Noble, mainly laid out along current US 77. (177 moved east.) I put together a map from the Census maps, which might be useful:
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A bit later: CORRECTION. No, the town wasn't peaking in '40. It peaked around '28, and the post office was closed in '42. So the census probably gave an accurate sense of the fading remnants.
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I've got three buildings so far, crammed together unrealistically here for scale checking. The school, a tenant cottage, and the main shop. All are fairly authentic based on available pix. (I'd already made the tenant cottage, a standard Aladdin unit, for an earlier set.)

About Me

Polistra was named after the original townsite of Manhattan (the one in Kansas). When I was growing up in Manhattan, I spent a lot of time exploring by foot, bike, and car. I discovered the ruins of an old mill along Wildcat Creek, and decided (inaccurately) that it was the remains of the original site of Polistra. Accurate or not, I've always liked the name, with its echoes of Poland (an under-appreciated friend of freedom) and stars. ==== The title icon is explained here. ==== Switchover: This 2007 entry marks a sharp change in worldview from neocon to pure populist. ===== The long illustrated story of Polistra's Dream is a time-travel fable, attempting to answer the dangerous revision of New Deal history propagated by Amity Shlaes. The Dream has 8 episodes, linked in a chain from the first. This entry explains the Shlaes connection.